DISD Passes Trans Protections!

The Dallas Independent School District is the second largest school district in the Lone Star State and last night became the third in the state of Texas to protect trans students and employees from discrimination and harassment based on gender identity and expression.

There were a total of six policies on the consent agenda that needed to have the gender identity and expression language added at last night's Board of Trustees meeting in order to accomplish that.

According to a FB report from Rafael McDonnell who attended last night's DISD meeting, four of the policies in the consent agenda passed on 9-0 votes. The student nondiscrimination policy passed 8-0 with one abstention, and the teacher contract one passed 6-3.

The NO or abstention votes had nothing to do with the addition of gender identity and expression language to those policies according to McDonnell, but other issues the NO voting DISD trustees felt were problematic.


This a huge win for the civil rights of trans Texans.  At any rate Dallas transpeeps, time to thank your DISD boardmembers who did vote to protect your human rights and reward them with your votes in their next election cycles.

Now that HISD, DISD and FWISD have these trans protection policies in place, what will the rest of the over 1000 school districts in Texas do?   

Austin, San Antonio where you at?   El Paso?  Suburban Houston, Dallas and San Antonio districts?  The Valley?  Corpus Christi?  Lubbock?    

As always, will keep y'all posted.

DISD Poised To Add Trans Protections

The Dallas Independent School District Board of Trustees will meet starting at 5:30 PM CDT tonight at its Ross Ave headquarters to consider amendments to six separate DISD policies that will have the effect of protecting trans students and employees from discrimination and harassment.

The Dallas Independent School District is the second largest in the Lone Star State, and the amendments are on the consent agenda for tonight's meeting.  

The proposed policy changes were discussed two weeks ago in a recent DISD meeting attended by Resource Center Dallas' Rafael McDonnell. 

"I think this is an incredibly positive step for DISD,” he said in a Dallas Voice interview. “We’d love to see other districts follow in the footsteps of Fort Worth ISD, Houston ISD and DISD.”

If passed DISD would become the third district in the state after the Houston ISD and neighboring Fort Worth ISD to ban discrimination and harassment based on gender identity and expression.

If you wish to be there Dallas area peeps to watch history, the DISD headquarters is at 3700 Ross Avenue.

This is one time I'll be rooting for the folks in Dallas and not dropping shade on them due to the ongoing  Houston-Dallas rivalry.  I hope this goes through without drama.

Texas School Boards Doing TBLG Rights Two Step Today

On opposite ends of Interstate 45 there will be civil rights activity today that we hope will result in good news for the trans communities of Houston and Dallas.  

The Dallas Independent School District will have a meeting in a few hours to discuss policy changes that would protect students, staff and teachers from discrimination based on gender identity and expression.   

This meeting is the first reading phase for the proposed policy changes, but if approved by the DISD Board of Trustees the policies would cover the following areas:

• Gender identity and gender expression nondiscrimination protections for students.
• Gender identity and gender expression nondiscrimination protections for staff and teachers.
• Codification of these protections in both the employee standards of conduct (teachers cannot harass students for being LGBT) and the student code of conduct.
• An anti-bullying policy that covers staff and teachers.

Back in November DISD became the first district in the state to adopt an anti-bullying policy to protect TBLG students, but the policy failed to address potential harassment by teachers.

Fort Worth ISD added trans discrimination employment protections in January and in June expanded the FWISD anti-bullying policy to cover gender identity and expression. 

On the southern end of I-45 the Houston Independent School District's Board of Trustees will meet starting at 5 PM CDT to conduct the second reading and final vote for the inclusion of gender identity and sexual orientation in the district's employment policy 

It passed on a 7-0 first reading vote at their June 23 meeting along with a 7-0 vote on HISD Code of Student Conduct changes for the 2011-2012 school year that added gender identity and expression language.

We in the Houston trans community are hopeful of a similar result at tonight's meeting at the Hattie Mae White Building and hope our friends in Dallas have good news to report as well.